Sil vous plait - Super Vitus 980/Peugeot

Who can tell me about Super Vitus 980 tubing/bikes? Feels really light. Has little Peugeot lions on the fork.

Kermit green, a few paint chips that have rusted.

55sq
6 spd
Simplex FD
Suntour 5000 RD
Simplex(?) DT shifters
Stronglight cranks
Stronglight headset
Weinmann 405 brakes/levers
Normandy hub - Aerohead 36h front
? Hub - Araya rear
Unknown bars, stem, saddle

Looks like it might have been a decent racer back in its day. Old tyres are super skinny.

Frame looks pretty sweet.

I’ll quote some frambuilders.

Super Vitus 980 is a very fine material and was manufactured by Ateliers
De La Rive, of Charmond, France, we know them as Vitus. SV980 was
introduced in 1984 and was coded by Vitus as 18M5 and is similar to if not
the same as18mcd5 - this is chromium molybdenum steel. Vitus changed the
name of this material to Vitus XO in the 90’s. I’m not sure of the date.

SV980 has a main frame wall thickness of .9/.6 mm the chain stays and
seat stays were .8 mm and the fork blades were 1.0 mm if 28 x19 or 1.2 mm if
29x16 mm.

Unfortunately, Vitus stopped making their steel tubing in the late 90’s
if my memory is correct.

SV 980 is indeed comparable to Reynolds’s 531. Reynolds 531, is a
mang-moly steel the TS is 116,500lb/in2, and Super Vitus 980 made by Atelier
de la rive of France this tube set is made of chrom-moly steel 18m5 is SV’s
coding which is similar to 25crmo4 used by Dedacciai and Columbus in some of
their sets 18m5 has a TS of 142,200lb/in2. The main triangle is .9mmX .6mm
wall thicness, chain stays are .8mm,
the seat stays are.6mm.

Super Vitus was not as popular in the USA as the other big 2
companies (Reynolds & Columbus) but in my humble opinion it was better.
I built many frames from Super Vitus 980 and 983 and found it to be easy
to braze and very consistent in material dimension.

I built many a frame with Vitus tubing. I hope I helped.

Anthony Mezzatesta
Mezzatesta Cycles
Cranberry Twp Pa 16066
724-778-8224

I used to build quite a few frames
with this Vitus 980 series and found them to give a very pleasant ride, not
unlike Columbus SL; in fact for some of my customers, the Vitus top-end
tubes were the series of their choice.

If you look at my Flickr site you will see a full Vitus 971 frame-kit advert

Norris Lockley

Settle UK

₪Vitus history by Norris Lockley

Here is an excerpt from the Used Bike Buyers Guide (scroll down). The
tubesets can be compared by weight within a family but not family to
family as my source(s) often included different tubes in each set of
weights, i.e. some included the fork steerer tube and fork blades. The
Used Bike Buyers Guide is available for $3 email version or $5 on disk.
The columns line up on the real version, but not the cut and paste as
shown. If you want a copy, send payment to:
Louis Deeter
9235 Ridge Pine Trail
Orlando FL 32819

TUBING: (MOST COMMON WITH AVERAGE WEIGHT FOR COMPARISON PURPOSES).

MAKE TYPE WEIGHT (IN GRAMS)
REYNOLDS 501 2025
REYNOLDS 531C 1800
REYNOLDS 531P 1700
REYNOLDS 653 1700
REYNOLDS 753 1650
COLUMBUS AELLE 2345
COLUMBUS GARA 2305
COLUMBUS CROMOR 2190
COLUMBUS THRON 2250
COLUMBUS SP 2300
COLUMBUS SL 1930
COLUMBUS SLX 1960
COLUMBUS TSX 1950
COLUMBUS NEURON 1885
COLUMBUS PRX 2310
COLUMBUS EL 1935
TANGE INFINITY 2405
TANGE 2 2290
TANGE 1 2220
TANGE PRESTIGE 1950
ISHIWATA 022 2200
ORIA ML 25 2100
VITUS 181 1790
VITUS 888 2030
VITUS 980 1507
VITUS 983 1624

It’s pretty hard to see wihtout having the frame in front of me but I don’t think it’s a Peugeot frame. Obviously the fork is, and Peugeot did use Vitus tubesets on their mid level frames but something about the frames looks Not-Peugeot. I’m not an expert, just a hunch.

Looks cool :wink: Does it fit you?

Sweet. I was hoping you might see this Spirito. Sorry for the shitty photos. Given your penchant for bike things that are French I figured you might have some info.

It would probably fit me with the right seat height and stem. Once I get some time I’ll pull the basics off and give it a wipe over and see how much seat post is left. Its an expanding post I think. New tires and I she’d roll, but I should clean stuff up, grease bearings etc as well.

Looks like a nice light weight tube set. Nice score mate. btw, we need to arrange another lunch for city workers…

code for getting paid to surf teh interwebs :wink:

Ha! I thought that was day traders :wink: Bloomberg sports updates.

Interesting topic what you have shared with us. Your writing skill is really very appreciative. I love when you share your views through the best articles.Keep sharing and posting articles like these.This article has helped me a lot.Keep posting this stuff.